Edge is the default browser in Windows PC. When you open any webpage or local file with .html extension, Windows will use Edge to open the content. This will be embracing if you don’t like Edge and want to use Google Chrome or Firefox on your PC. So, the simple solution is to change the default browser to Chrome so that Windows will open all web files with Chrome. However, there could be different scenarios that you want to open only HTML file in Chrome and PDF files in Edge. In this article, we will explain three different options to set default browser in Windows 11/10.
Change Default Browser in Windows
Windows use Edge app to open file extensions like .htm, .html, .pdf, .mhtml, .svg, .shtml, etc. Therefore, changing the default browser will only help to open these file extensions with another browser app like Chrome. However, other web related files like .css, .js, .xml, etc. will be opened with different apps (for example .css with Wordpad). So, changing the default browser app depends upon your need and here are the possible ways you can choose the browser app:
- Each time manually select browser when opening web related files
- Always use particular browser app to open specific file extension
- Change default browser from Edge and open only Edge related files with the new brower app
1. Manually Selecting Browser App to Open Files
This option helps to keep the default browser as Edge and manually choose the browser for opening particular file type. For example, you can use Chrome to open .CSS, .JS or .XML file.
- Find the file you want to open and right-click on it (sometimes, you need to hold shift key and right-click)
- Choose “Open with” option and then select the app from the list.
- If you are not finding your favorite app in the list, click “Choose another app”.
- This will open a pop-up showing list of apps for selection. If you still not find the app, click on “More apps” link and then click “Look for another app on this PC” to locate an app from your computer.
- If you always want to open the that specific file extension with the browser app, then check the box “Always use this app to open <file extension> files” option.
- Click “OK” button to open the file with the browser app.
2. Using Browser App for Particular File Type
As mentioned, Windows will not even use Edge to open CSS, script and SML files. Though the above method is easy, doing so when opening each single file is a daunting task. Instead of using always using the app option, what you can do is to assign the browser at file types level. For example, you can assign Google Chrome to .css file type to open all stylesheets.
- Press “Win + X” shortcut keys or right-click on the Start icon to open power user menu and select “Settings” from the list.
- When you are in Windows Settings app, go to “Apps > Default Apps” section.
- On the next screen, enter the file extension on the search box to filter the app associated with that file extension. For example, enter .pdf to see Microsoft Edge as Edge is assigned to open PDF files by default in Windows 11.
- Click on the Edge app and select an alternate from the list. As explained above, you can click “More apps” to expand the list and then browse your computer to choose other installed app.
Similar way, you can assign Chrome or any other browser app for .CSS, .JS, .XML and any other file type to open then with browser.
3. Change Default Browser from App Settings
The final option is to simply assign another app as your default browser. This will only replace the Edge related file types and continue to use default apps for other file types. Let us say, you want to use Chrome as your default browser. Most of the times, when you open Chrome browser, you can see a yellow bar at the top asking to set Google Chrome as your default browser. You can simply click on ‘set as default’ button. If you don’t see such bar, go to “chrome://settings/defaultBrowser” in address bar and click on “Make default” button. Since this is on Chrome settings page, it will work on Windows 11, 10 or in any other Windows version.
4. Change Default Browser in Windows 11
Besides Chrome settings page, you can always change the default browser from the internal settings in Windows 11. When you are in Windows Settings app, go to “Apps > Default apps” section. Now, enter the new browser app (Chrome in our case) in the text box below “Set defaults for applications” heading to filter that app.
Click on the filtered app (Google Chrome) and then click “Set default” button.
This will set your default browser as Google Chrome and you will see a small tick mark indicating the change is successfully applied. You will also see the relevant file types like .html, .html and .pdf listed below will show Chrome icon instead of Edge icon.
5. Change Default Browser in Windows 10
In Windows 10, you can open ‘Settings’ from the start menu by clicking on a small gear icon. If you don’t see an icon, simply search for ‘settings’ and hit enter key.
When you’re inside of Windows Settings panel, you need to open the “Apps” section.
Now, you’ll see lot of options there, from the left-side menu, click on ‘Default apps’.
Scroll to the bottom on the right hand pane and you will see “Web browser” section. By default, Windows 10 will have Microsoft Edge as a default browser. So, if you didn’t change it, you will see Microsoft Edge otherwise you will see the current default browser. Just click the current app, it will show relevant apps and ask you to ‘choose an app’ to set as default browser. You can select for ‘Google Chrome’ and it’s done.
You have successfully set your default browser as ‘Chrome’ in Windows 10. Now, open any HTML or PDF file to see that it opens in Google Chrome by default.
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